-Sigh- Dead Island...

[Kopikatsu]

Im level 30 right now. Ive had no problem with the game, nor the level scaling.
Its a GOOD thing this game is difficult.

In fact, quite a bit of my equipment is underlevel. But because you can repair and upgrade your equipment, you can extend their lifetime massively. They also give you your RAGE which you should spam whenever you have it. It saves you durability on you weapons, gives you extra exp, and extends the total time you can spend out on the field.

I have died a few times, but its been my fault for it. Like letting a Ram back me in a small corner so it can kick me to death. Or running headfirst at a group of walkers, while ignoring the infected chasing me.

Dead Island may be one of my games of the year. Its a challenge. And i like a challenge. Complaining "OMG my weapons broke!" isnt a valid argument. You should carry more weapons, have them properly repaired and upgraded, and avoid combat when its not necessary. You dont have to fight every zombie you see all the time. Sometimes just running past them. or finding an alternate route is the best idea.

Also, you should keep an eye out of chests. No matter when level you are, they keep leveled weapons in them. If you go back to the level 1 or 2 zone, and run out of weapons, look for weapon chests. Simple.

I actually have my inventory completely filled with max upgraded green, orange, and blue weapons. However, I've learned to completely disregard them unless I'm fighting something other than Walkers/Infected. Kick to the face + Crouch and punch them in the face gives you a ton of XP (Barehanded punches apparently give XP for some reason), kills them quickly, and doesn't use up weapon durability.

I call it bad game design when level scaling makes weapons 80+% irrelevant.

I was forced to scavenge weapons in order to survive.

Almost like a zombie game.

I kid, it sounds like there have been some annoying playtimes for you. I have to ask though, did you approach the game with an open mind, or had you heard nothing but bad reviews? Not criticising you or anything, genuinely asking.

I don't actually read/watch reviews because they're mostly subjective. (I say mostly because something like Superman 64 is shit and everyone realizes that.)

And I bought it the day it came out, so I hadn't had a chance to hear anything about it either. I didn't even know about the whole Steam fiasco until I was on Chapter 3. Refer to my first response in this post, though. I've learned to completely ignore weapons and go beat hordes of zombies to death with my bare hands whilst taking zero damage. That goes far beyond Survival Horror/RPG and straight back into Dead Rising territory.

Its a survival RPG! Here let me go get a game that will spoon feed you easy mode so you can run through it like Deus Ex:HR.... (LOL thats a low blow I know and I liked Deus Ex:HR but it was too easy.) You smack undead non feeling creatures to death with ordinary things you find in the world and expect them not to break??? WHAT!? Oh and do me a favor go scavenge your neighborhood and then come back and tell me how many guns/bullets you found... yea I bet none. This game was not designed for the silver spoon feeding kids that love WOW or Crysis 2 type of games. Welcome to something close to what all games used to be like where you have to actually work and think for yourself... OMG NO I cant think on my own!!

The leveling in this game is just fine and keeps the game challenging. The weapons IMO level at a pace just shy of current to keep you surviving. OH no my purple brass knuckles of doom just broke! Now your forced to fend off zombies with wooden planks and oars laying around a vacation resort. I think it makes the game alot more fun to have that kind of challenge rather then being able to kill a zombie in 1 hit. JUST MY 2 CENTS!! (Don't get mad.. Get glad!)

See the first response. It's not a matter of the game being fun and challenging when the easiest method of dealing with 80+% of threats is 'L2, R3, Hold R1' over and over and over again.

 

[-Samurai-]

I've yet to notice any problems in level scaling. The levels of the Walkers are kinda unimportant when you're carrying around good weaponry. One of my bats kills them one hit anyway. They're easy enough not to worry about, but hordes of them are difficult enough to still be exciting.

My only gripe so far is the damn auto target. Aiming for the head is impossible when the game forces you to look at their arms, and then their feet if you swing down. The auto targeting defeats the purpose of the Analog control option.

 

[Something Amyss]

Soooooo , what you prefer that enemies always be weaker than you and the game becomes L4D on easy mode?

Did anyone say that at all?

You don't need to make enemies "always weaker" to do away with level scaling.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

I don't actually read/watch reviews because they're mostly subjective. (I say mostly because something like Superman 64 is shit and everyone realizes that.)

And I bought it the day it came out, so I hadn't had a chance to hear anything about it either. I didn't even know about the whole Steam fiasco until I was on Chapter 3. Refer to my first response in this post, though. I've learned to completely ignore weapons and go beat hordes of zombies to death with my bare hands whilst taking zero damage. That goes far beyond Survival Horror/RPG and straight back into Dead Rising territory.

Pahaha...I like your moxie dude.
Yeah fair enough, sounds like you're speaking purely on your own opinions of the game.
UUGH not run-out-of-weapons-and-just-punch-them-to-death syndrome. I hated having to deal with that in Dead Rising. I would say maybe that's a sign that the game should be played less focused on killing and more on just staying alive but, it really isn't that kind of game is it.

 

[B4DD]

I say that right there is the technicality. I don't think you really lose the individuality, especially when they do it well. I find myself ignoring levels though most of the time. It doesn't matter that my Shepard is level twenty. What matters is I've just finished upping X skill. So yeah, you can say that everyone just calls levels different names, but I honestly think they're a technicality, some kind of formality really.

You've just finished upping the level of your skill

Zounds, it's worse than I thought! That's kind of my point. It's become such a permeating word in gamerdom that it's kind of lost all its original meaning, or at least transcended it.

It's just very easy of me not to think in terms of levels these days, and I grew up with Final Fantasy and Pokemon. Games where level was literally around every corner.

You make it sound teribble but it's as if you've taken up opposition against the word inventory, it's an intrinsic part of the system. You can attempt to remove it, and heck your more than likely going to succeed, God only knows why you want to. (sorry, but ima use another analogy) it's like if you were a car manufacturer and you wanted to do away with the assembly line because it's being used as a crutch.

 

[Inkidu]

I say that right there is the technicality. I don't think you really lose the individuality, especially when they do it well. I find myself ignoring levels though most of the time. It doesn't matter that my Shepard is level twenty. What matters is I've just finished upping X skill. So yeah, you can say that everyone just calls levels different names, but I honestly think they're a technicality, some kind of formality really.

You've just finished upping the level of your skill

Zounds, it's worse than I thought! That's kind of my point. It's become such a permeating word in gamerdom that it's kind of lost all its original meaning, or at least transcended it.

It's just very easy of me not to think in terms of levels these days, and I grew up with Final Fantasy and Pokemon. Games where level was literally around every corner.

You make it sound teribble but it's as if you've taken up opposition against the word inventory, it's an intrinsic part of the system. You can attempt to remove it, and heck your more than likely going to succeed, God only knows why you want to. (sorry, but ima use another analogy) it's like if you were a car manufacturer and you wanted to do away with the assembly line because it's being used as a crutch.

It's not that they're terrible, they're just not necessary. Not anymore. Levels have kind of become synonymous with The Grind. So I see it as giving robots jobs on the line where a task is boring or dangerous.

 

[Rhinzual26]

For open-world games, it's pretty much necessary, or it ends up either too easy or too hard. The game that did it the best, in my opinion, is Morrowind.

Creatures and Daedra levelled, which made exploring always challenging, but there were also one hell of a lot of fixed enemies, mostly NPCs. There were also no-go zones like Red Mountain and Daedric Ruins that were scaled very highly, but once you got to a high enough level they were doable.

REAL GAMERS KILL UMBRA WITH ONLY THEIR HANDS AS A MAGE!

Ahem, sorry about that, but yes, Morrowind was the shining example of how unless you were a high level and outfitted appropriately, some areas and creatures would just turn you into paste.

 

[Xyphon]

Soooooo , what you prefer that enemies always be weaker than you and the game becomes L4D on easy mode?

Well, you could introduce new enemies, increase the frequency of the weaker ones, allow them new tactics and weapons.

It's progression, something good games have been doing since... well.. forever.

Take Metroid Prime, near the beginning you are introduced to Baby Sheegoths. They spawn and attack in ones and twos and take a brief firefight to defeat. As the Baby moniker suggests, you eventually run into mum, who equates to a full scale boss fight and takes several minutes to put down.

But that's the beginning of the game, by the mid point, babies aren't a huge problem, you have a weapon that can stun them. Mum still presents a significant threat, but you have new abilities that mean you can avoid them and move on if necessary. Unfortunately, by this point you've met the Space Pirate in force, they have guns, lots of gun.

By the end, Baby Sheegoth is a nothing, you have the plasma beam and you can vaporise them in one charged shot. Adult Sheegoths are still a threat, but you have the fire power to kill them fast.
Unfortunately, you're now facing Space Pirate specialists and Hunter Metroids (amongst other, worse stuff). You may have all weapons, all the abilities and all the upgrades, but you're going to need them all and a healthy dose of skill to put these highly durable opponents down.

Progression!

It's even easy to apply to a game like Dead Island.
To start with you only have weak, freshly infected civilians, then as the infection progresses they get strongerand basic enemies get more more numerous. Then the military arrives to clean up, you included because better safe than sorry, so now you have zombies, strong zombies and humans wearing armour with guns.

Later on, the infection is well established and it has spread to the soldiers on the island. So now you have zombies, strong zombies and those two types wearing armour/carrying weapons plus the human enemies and since time has passed you can introduce more specialised infected and mini boss type enemies. Plus the 'normal' infected spawn in groups of twenty plus so even though you can carve them down individually, you still can't just run'n'gun through the map.


Having the same enemies get stronger on an arbitrary basis (you're level two, so now all enemies are level two), is insultingly lazy developing. If they're always going to be that hard to kill, why have a levelling system at all? Just keep everyone at the base level since relative to each other it will remain the same regardless of level anyway.

Enemy progression actually IS in the game.

The zombies at the start are weak Walker ranked. They are slow and easy to kill, even in groups.

As time goes on, you run into the Thug ranked zombie, a boss fight for early levels. Can take a good chunk of your health and send you flying a good distance with a single swipe.

Stronger normals called Infected start to appear. They are fast, have more HP and will easily fuck your shit up in groups.

Further along you come across the Suicider. Actually pretty easy to deal with in open spaces, but can easily kill you in a single explosion.

In Act 2, you come across normal zombies with a twist. They have an air of poison around them which will constantly damage you if you get too close.

Then you hit the Ram, the BIG POPPA of the zombies. He can easily be considered the hardest of the boss fights.

After that, you discover the zombie called (I think) the Floater. His spit is poisonous and can do some good damage if you're not careful.

There's another zombie that you'll encounter, but I haven't got that far yet.

 

[B4DD]

It's not that they're terrible, they're just not necessary. Not anymore. Levels have kind of become synonymous with The Grind. So I see it as giving robots jobs on the line where a task is boring or dangerous.

Your trying to mend the finger by amputating the arm. The fact that it's synonymous with The Grind is the problem. It's a problem of laziness just like level scaling (on topic, i just beat the game and it turns out that the level scaling is useful, because you can progress through the game rather quickly and if you end if in act four as a lower level you gonna have problems if they are higher level enemies. Also its works in other ways that would take longer to explain.). Leveling can work and has worked, your letting a few bad apples ruin the bunch (good god do i love to turn a phrase!).

 

[B4DD]

Soooooo , what you prefer that enemies always be weaker than you and the game becomes L4D on easy mode?

Well, you could introduce new enemies, increase the frequency of the weaker ones, allow them new tactics and weapons.

It's progression, something good games have been doing since... well.. forever.

Take Metroid Prime, near the beginning you are introduced to Baby Sheegoths. They spawn and attack in ones and twos and take a brief firefight to defeat. As the Baby moniker suggests, you eventually run into mum, who equates to a full scale boss fight and takes several minutes to put down.

But that's the beginning of the game, by the mid point, babies aren't a huge problem, you have a weapon that can stun them. Mum still presents a significant threat, but you have new abilities that mean you can avoid them and move on if necessary. Unfortunately, by this point you've met the Space Pirate in force, they have guns, lots of gun.

By the end, Baby Sheegoth is a nothing, you have the plasma beam and you can vaporise them in one charged shot. Adult Sheegoths are still a threat, but you have the fire power to kill them fast.
Unfortunately, you're now facing Space Pirate specialists and Hunter Metroids (amongst other, worse stuff). You may have all weapons, all the abilities and all the upgrades, but you're going to need them all and a healthy dose of skill to put these highly durable opponents down.

Progression!

It's even easy to apply to a game like Dead Island.
To start with you only have weak, freshly infected civilians, then as the infection progresses they get strongerand basic enemies get more more numerous. Then the military arrives to clean up, you included because better safe than sorry, so now you have zombies, strong zombies and humans wearing armour with guns.

Later on, the infection is well established and it has spread to the soldiers on the island. So now you have zombies, strong zombies and those two types wearing armour/carrying weapons plus the human enemies and since time has passed you can introduce more specialised infected and mini boss type enemies. Plus the 'normal' infected spawn in groups of twenty plus so even though you can carve them down individually, you still can't just run'n'gun through the map.


Having the same enemies get stronger on an arbitrary basis (you're level two, so now all enemies are level two), is insultingly lazy developing. If they're always going to be that hard to kill, why have a levelling system at all? Just keep everyone at the base level since relative to each other it will remain the same regardless of level anyway.

Enemy progression actually IS in the game.

The zombies at the start are weak Walker ranked. They are slow and easy to kill, even in groups.

As time goes on, you run into the Thug ranked zombie, a boss fight for early levels. Can take a good chunk of your health and send you flying a good distance with a single swipe.

Stronger normals called Infected start to appear. They are fast, have more HP and will easily fuck your shit up in groups.

Further along you come across the Suicider. Actually pretty easy to deal with in open spaces, but can easily kill you in a single explosion.

In Act 2, you come across normal zombies with a twist. They have an air of poison around them which will constantly damage you if you get too close.

Then you hit the Ram, the BIG POPPA of the zombies. He can easily be considered the hardest of the boss fights.

After that, you discover the zombie called (I think) the Floater. His spit is poisonous and can do some good damage if you're not careful.

There's another zombie that you'll encounter, but I haven't got that far yet.

I like how he basically outlined exactly what happens in Dead Island. (Fix not Xyphon (well actually Xyphon too, but that was intentional.)). Also that last zombie you encounter is the butcher, I'll let you figure out what he does.

The game only hits a few problems with level scaling, though it works on a whole. It starts to not work when you first get to the city; its pretty tough cause there are a lot of zombies and damn if it isn't nerve racking. You don't really have the weaponry to deal with that many zombies, but you get there.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

1. I love this game.

2. I don't mind the level scaling, and that's ignoring a skill my character (Xian Mei, or, as I've lovingly dubbed her, 'Knives Chau') can unlock that removes the advantages of the higher level zombies, basically knocking them down to your level. I mean, I get leveled weapons as I go along, so it's not a real problem. Also, taking the challenge out, imo, would remove most of the tension. I've often found myself having the most fun as I scream in terror for help through my headset at my companions, as I'm chased by a pack of Infected through the streets. Even with my best weapons, more than one or two of those fuckers are a death sentence. Even now, hearing one of them scream sends shivers up my spine. Becoming a level 50 god of death that is barely phased by (non-leveling) undead anymore would hamper the intensity greatly, and detract from an awesome game.

Plus, I'm an old school, beat Ninja Gaiden on NES when I was 12, games are supposed to be kinda hard, type gamer.

3. I love this game.

"I GOT A ZOMBIE ARMY, AND YOU CAN'T HARM ME.
WHO DO YOU VOODOO, *****?!"

 

[Xyphon]

Soooooo , what you prefer that enemies always be weaker than you and the game becomes L4D on easy mode?

Well, you could introduce new enemies, increase the frequency of the weaker ones, allow them new tactics and weapons.

-snip-

-snip-

I like how he basically outlined exactly what happens in Dead Island. (Fix not Xyphon (well actually Xyphon too, but that was intentional.)). Also that last zombie you encounter is the butcher, I'll let you figure out what he does.

The game only hits a few problems with level scaling, though it works on a whole. It starts to not work when you first get to the city; its pretty tough cause there are a lot of zombies and damn if it isn't nerve racking. You don't really have the weaponry to deal with that many zombies, but you get there.

Yeah, my friend and me encountered him for the first time last night. I was expecting an uber fast, face shredding monster of doom.

Instead I got an old zombie doing ballet with sharpened bones.

Kicked his ass in a few seconds

 

[shadow_Fox81]

I'm enjoying having my ass handed to me by the undead for once and having to think before i do anything or panic feverishly as i get caught of my guard.

frantically dancing about a zombie with a broom handle reminds me of Don't stop me now by Queen for some reason though.

EDITalso i like how the comon infected are the greatest threat, its almost Brooksian zombie fiction.)

 

[VampLena]

When levels scale it stops being a RPG and just becomes a action game, then at that point you really have to ask, why include levels at all?

Kudos to ID Software's RAGE devs for realizing this and not bothering to implement levels at all since all enemies are going to scale. The point of a RPG is to watch your character grow and evolve and boundaries previously difficult become easy as you ascend to newer challenges. That doesn't happen here, Every Walker you find will be just as difficult as it was at level one, same with infected. Just as enemies will always hit your health for the SAME Percentage as they did at level one. Which is boring and pointless.

Maybe the COD kids love RPGs like this but this just makes it a stupid RPG because it turns it into a action game with superficial levels tacked on.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

If there's one thing Oblivion did right with level scaling, it was scaling loot to the levels, too.

While that was nice, it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Why is this lowly bandit robbing me in hopes of a few coins when his glass armor is worth enough for him to sell and retire? I thought that aspect of it really broke the immersion for me.

 

[zwober]

Why is this lowly bandit robbing me in hopes of a few coins when his glass armor is worth enough for him to sell and retire?

because he wanted the full set ?

OT aside tho, seeing as abilitys and loot will scale aswell as the zombies, im guessing the intent was to make it so that the extra advantage that ability X or weapon Y will give you is larger then the Z amount of HP the zombie has now. So, all in all, its a feature, not a bug. just a really bad feature that needs some tweaking. hopefully theyll fix that Before they launch a d'mned DLC.

(OT again) - Even if i do want that DLC. one with diffrent suits, skins clothes, whatevers - just aslong as my little asian girl dosent have to run around in High-bloopin-heels all the time.

perhaps a skill for having extra pointy heels ?

*does a run-jump-kick at a zombie and crits for 100+dmg at level 7...*

 

[GonzoGamer]

I'm a little confused.
Did Borderlands have a really good level scaling system or just a really good cadence? I don't know but that in itself is pretty impressive: never noticed.